


Petals

by ClaireBHypno



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaireBHypno/pseuds/ClaireBHypno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John reaches under Sherlock's bed, looking for the book he's been summarily sent to find.  Instead, his searching hand finds a box... and he's astounded by Sherlock's explanation of the contents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John shoved his arm as far under Sherlock’s bed as he could, searching for the book he had been told was under there. He stretched out his arm, fingertips grasping, and bumped up against a shoebox. Curious, he tucked his fingers under the lid, arm stretched out to its limit, and for a moment thought he had only succeeded in pushing it further under. Suddenly one of his nails caught, and he felt the box slide a little way towards him.

Encouraged, John tried again, tucking his finger further under the lid and getting a better grasp, finally managing to pull it far enough forward to get a firm grasp on the box. He pulled it out from under the bed, wondering what might be in it; Sherlock hadn’t mentioned boxes when instructing John to fetch “Hunter’s ‘Manual of Beekeeping’, John, under my bed. Don’t look at me like that, just fetch it will you, a man’s life depends on it!”

John could see as it slid out that it was one of the boxes Sherlock’s ridiculously expensive handmade Italian leather shoes came in. At least, that was John’s assumption, he didn’t speak Italian, so couldn’t know for sure what the writing on the box said. The box was the right sort of size and shape though, and there was an address in Via Montenapoleone, Milano. John had travelled enough of the world to know that Milan was in Italy, and so he felt it was almost certain the box was a shoebox. He felt quite pleased with the deduction, until he realised that by Sherlock’s standards it was child’s play.

John felt a little spark of guilt as he picked up the box, but ruthlessly quashed it by thinking of all the times he had returned home from work to find Sherlock’s fingers flying over the keyboard of his laptop, or wearing his tee-shirts because Sherlock’s were all dirty and he hadn’t done any laundry. It was lighter than he expected, much lighter, and he knew instantly that there were no shoes inside.

He began to lift the lid from the box. It was a little stiff, so the first thing that hit him was the smell; it was sweet and floral, but with an undercurrent of something. John wasn’t sure quite what it was, but it reminded him of the junction between the old town and the new town in Tallinn, right up against the old city wall. He had spent a couple of weeks there on leave once, and had fallen in love with the city, returning whenever he had the chance. It had been a beautiful spot to watch people from, with a small green space raised above the street providing somewhere to sit, and only a slight turn of the head needed to take you from the modern neon and tower blocks to the beautiful old cobbled stone streets, small and winding with traditional buildings lining them. John had spent many happy hours there, buying English language novels from the small bookshop across the street, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face and the cooling breeze that differentiated it from the dirt and dust of Afghanistan.

He closed his eyes for a moment or two, inhaling deeply, and was transported instantly back to those streets. He imagined wandering along, remembering the incongruousness of the bright, modern McDonald’s restaurant snuggled up against the old city wall, and suddenly he realised what the smell was. Opposite the bookshop was a flower kiosk; every day buckets of fresh flowers were stood outside on the pavements for shoppers to smell, hopefully enticing them to a purchase. John remembered how, when the breeze was blowing in the right direction, the smell of those petals would drift up to him on his bench, some days smelling like a tropical paradise, other days reminding him of an English country garden. At the end of the day, he would walk back to the old town and the old lady and her assistants would be bringing the buckets back inside, discarding any flowers that were past their prime. As Tallinn’s workers returned from the new town back into the old, they would step on the discarded flowers, crushing their petals and releasing the scent. What John could smell now was that same scent; crushed flowers of different varieties, their unique scents mixing and combining.

He looked eagerly into the box, wondering why on earth Italian shoemakers would choose to add floral scents to shoes, after all, the smell of leather was a heady scent of it’s own, with no need for disguise or enhancement. He was surprised to see the box was filled with flower petals, nothing else. Roses, carnations, orchids, lilies, freesias, daffodils, he recognised every petal there. He ran his fingers through their softness, feeling them drift against his skin, gentle and feathery. Deeper into the box, the petals were starting to rot, releasing that undercurrent of scent that John had recognised from the flower kiosk. He lifted a handful up to his face, inhaling their scent, reminded of the relaxing days in Tallinn that had been so peaceful. A footstep on the wooden floorboard behind him startled John, and he jumped, catapulting the petals over his chest, some sticking to his woollen jumper, some drifting down to settle gently on his lap. Sherlock stood in the doorway, an odd expression on his face.

“I’m sorry Sherlock,” John said, picking petals from his clothes and dropping them in the box. He crammed the lid on the box again, dropping it to one side, and shoved his arm back under the bed. “I’m still trying to find it, I won’t be a tick!”

Sherlock sat down next to John and picked up the box, removing the lid. He brought it up to his face, eyes closing as he breathed in the scent that arose from the box. “I kept all of them, you know,” he said quietly. John wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but stilled with his arm still under the bed, where it had been groping for the book. “Oh?” he said, not knowing anything else to say.

Sherlock’s voice deepened a little, cracking as he replied. “Every time you visited my grave, you brought flowers. Every week. Two or three times a week, in the beginning. Did you never wonder what happened to the ones you left?”

John gasped, remembering all of the visits he had made, never stopping to wonder where last week’s flowers had gone. In the beginning, time had been strange; hours passed and the clock would tell him it was ten minutes since he had last looked. Months went by, and yet the newspapers had only produced one edition. It was no wonder it hadn’t occurred to him that something was happening to the flowers he left; in John’s mind it had been months since he last came, when in reality there had been no more than a few days since the last time he had been. As time had gone on, and life had returned to some semblance of normality, John had gone less and less to the graveside, so he simply hadn’t noticed.

“It was a few weeks before Mycroft could get me safely out of the country to start with, so I collected the flowers myself because they were proof to me that you were still breathing, that you hadn’t given up. They were proof that it had been worth it, that I had kept you safe. Once I was… away… one of Mycroft’s minions used to collect them for me, and send them on. Some places I went to I received a parcel regularly, with your flowers in. Other places were harder to get packages to me, and I’d receive one, then nothing for weeks on end. I never let anyone else remove the petals; that was always my task. I could imagine your fingers brushing each one, and it made me feel closer to you, as though I was touching something you had just handed to me…” He trailed off, slowly opening his eyes to look at the myriad colours in the box before him.

John sat up slowly, his mouth open. He reached across to Sherlock’s chin, raising it, so he could look him in the eyes. Sherlock’s eyes filled with tears, and before he knew it, John had pulled Sherlock down into his arms, rocking and soothing and peppering his hair with kisses. “It’s all over now, you did it, you saved us all,” he crooned softly. “I love you Sherlock, and I’ll buy you flowers every day for the rest of your life.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John takes Sherlock to Tallinn, and keeps his promise.

Sherlock and John wandered out of the shopping centre, heading back towards the Old Town. John had just introduced Sherlock to the delights of cherry hot chocolate – a hot chocolate drink so thick it was as though a bar of chocolate had just been melted into a glass. It was served in a martini glass, with a shot of green cherry syrup in the bottom, and it was the best thing Sherlock had ever tasted.

The two of them had been in Tallinn for three days now, staying at the Vana Wiru hotel just inside the wall of the Old Town, and John had been showing Sherlock all of his favourite locations. They had taken a meandering walk through Tallinn to the beautiful Alexander Nevsky Cathedral; they had looked out over the city from the top of the old city wall, and John had explained to Sherlock that the nickname of the watchtower, Kiek in de Kök, in fact meant “Peep into the Kitchen”, rather than a painful method of persuading people not to invade the old city. They had eaten in Balthasar’s, the garlic restaurant, where virtually everything on the menu came with garlic, including the beer. They had been to The Olde Hansa, and eaten wonderful dishes and gotten tipsy on berry schnapps and honey beer.

Sherlock had chatted with a few Estonian people, in an attempt to pick up some of the language, but discovered it was extremely difficult, related only to Hungarian and Finnish. He had managed to pick up a few basics, such as “hello”, “please” and “thank you”, but had decided he knew all the Estonian he would ever need to know when he had discovered that “twelve months” translated to Estonian as “kaksteist kuud” – pronounced almost exactly as the English “cocks taste good”. Since then, every question John asked with any relation to time was answered with “kaksteist kuud” and a raft of giggles. John had been informed that Sherlock was going to be twelve months in the bathroom, that he wanted to go out to eat in twelve months, that John had napped for twelve months on the second afternoon they had been there, and that Sherlock had ordered their wine twelve months ago. It was worth putting up with for the look of sheer joy on Sherlock’s face every time John giggled.

This particular afternoon, John had decided to take Sherlock into the newer part of the city, so they had ordered a taxi to take them into the heart of the city where they had spent a lazy morning wandering around looking into shop windows, nibbling on pastries and generally enjoying being away from the hustle and bustle of London. John knew that Sherlock would only be able to enjoy himself for a few days before he would be itching to find something to do again. As they crossed the green in front of the shopping centre, John seemed to start a little, as he realised where they were. His mind drifted back six months previously, to the night he had found the box under Sherlock’s bed. He remembered the smell of the flower petals drifting from under the lid, the way they had floated down over him when Sherlock had startled him and he had dropped them, and he remembered the promise he had made to Sherlock that night – a promise he had kept ever day since then.

He took Sherlock’s had in his own, and steered him gently to the crossing, waiting patiently for the numbers that would count down to signify when the traffic would again have priority.

“Where are we going, John?” Sherlock asked, following along easily.

“I have something I need to show you,” John answered, and he placed one hand on the small of Sherlock’s back, guiding him around the corner onto the almost cobbled road. As he breathed in again, Sherlock’s eyes widened, and he turned to John, as though seeking validation of his senses.

“Do you remember that night I found the petals under your bed? This was where I was in my head when you came looking for me. I spent so much time sitting just up there,” John indicated the benches above the shops, “just smelling the beautiful smells that came from this shop…” They walked further along the street, until they came to the buckets filled with beautifully coloured and scented flowers, and John plucked a rose from the bucket that was such a deep red it could almost be black. He raised it to his nose and inhaled deeply. There was a girl arranging carnations in another bucket a little way away, and turning to her, John fished a handful of Euro coins from his pocket, paying for the rose. He turned back to Sherlock, taking him once more by the hand.

“The first flowers I put on your grave were roses, as dark in colour as this one, but with almost no scent – it was the wrong time of year, they were hothouse roses. This was what I wanted to give you then, something as incredible, and powerful, and unique as you were. I couldn’t do it then, so I’m going to do it now, like I promised that night with the petals.” So saying, John handed the rose to Sherlock, and they walked on together, the scent of the symbol of John’s love for Sherlock drifting up between them.

[](http://s1383.photobucket.com/user/ClaireBHypno/media/DSC00271_zpspj6znaxc.jpg.html)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cherry hot chocolate is a real thing, but I don't know if it is still available in Tallinn, as I have only been there in the winter once - it wasn't on the menu when I next returned in the summer. It's beautiful chocolate, and comes with a glass of water as it's so thick!
> 
> Again, Balthasar's and the Olde Hansa are real restaurants, and both come highly recommended, especially the Olde Hansa - the berry schnapps is lovely and caused me to get temporarily disowned by my friends - oops... They do a wonderful bear - yes, bear - and the best filet mignon I have ever eaten. Go there if you can, you won't regret it!
> 
> The Estonian for twelve months is absolutely true, and caused many days of amusement when I attended a hypnotherapy seminar with a group of English friends and we discovered it... The amazing Eesti translators knew exactly why we kept shoehorning the phrase "twelve months" into everything we said that needed to be translated to the group, and despite this, managed to keep their cool and do a very professional job!
> 
> Finally, the photograph is of the actual flower stall, which is located just outside the old city wall near the Vana Wire hotel - which is also lovely.

**Author's Note:**

> I had this little image come to me and it seemed to perfect not to write up... Please leave a comment, they really are a writer's lifeblood :0)


End file.
